How Could Corporate Wellness Benefit Your Company?
Corporate Wellness
More and more, our culture is beginning to recognize the importance of prioritizing our overall health. There is increased recognition between our physical and mental health and just how crucial it is to engage in regular activities that enhance our overall well-being. With more emphasis on health and wellness, corporations and businesses may consider how they can create a culture of corporate wellness. Corporate wellness is a way a company can encourage healthier lifestyle choices for their employees. As defined in the book, a corporate wellness program is an “organized employer-sponsored program” that is designed to support employees (and sometimes their families) as they adopt and sustain behaviors that reduce health risks, improve quality of life, enhance productivity, and benefit an organization's bottom line.
How Could Corporate Wellness Benefit a Company?
It doesn’t take very long for a working individual to recognize that when their physical and mental health begins to suffer, so does their work performance. When motivation and energy drop, this has the capacity to impact other colleagues, the energy in the building or office space, and the overall quality of the deliverable one is working on. If employees were routinely engaging in physical exercise, this could potentially improve the employees' attitudes, but what if it even resulted in a financial benefit for the company? When we are physically in better condition, we are less likely to miss work due to pain, illness, or excess medical appointments, which results in fewer sick-day being paid out by employers. With physical health having a benefit on mental health, this may increase job performance, creativity among the workers, improved work efficiency, and more satisfied clients that the company serves. With increased client satisfaction comes more referrals and increased financial security for the company. When we feel better, we are happier! A happier employee who feels appreciated by their company and knows that their overall health is valued is likely to improve their job retention. In addition, large amounts of money is spent onboarding new staff and it would be reasonable to consider that money would be saved in this way if there was less turnover.
Creative Ways to Implement Corporate Wellness
Ablah et al. (2019) reflected on ways companies could help support their employees' efforts to engage in physical exercise. Written policies help can motivate these types of behaviors. The following examples include:
-Short activity breaks. This can encourage employees to stand up or move slightly to interrupt being sedentary.
-Paying staff to exercise, whether this be providing compensation for a gym membership or allowing the staff member to use a period of their time at work to exercise. This may help eliminate the barrier of not “having enough time” to exercise or money to pay for a gym membership.
-Stretching breaks at the beginning of the shift or throughout the day.
Flexing time for exercise would allow the employee to work out before or following work, which will still allow them to maintain their expected work hours.
-Group “booster” breaks which involve getting the team together to perform a short physical exercise for a period of time.
-Walking meetings.
Other creative ways to implement policies could include offering a space within the workplace (if space permits) with basic work out equipment where staff could exercise before, during, or after work or creating an incentive program where staff work individually and collectively toward a goal (e.g., the entire team walks “X” amount of miles within the next 30 days to win “Y,” and the person who walks the most number of miles wins “Z”).
On a public policy level, there are additional ways to support corporate wellness, inclusive of workplace tax credits, wellness grants, workplace wellness incentives, employment subsidies for active commenting or for those who take public transit, and complete streets (Ablah, et al., 2019). So, while we have ways to go on a public policy level, there are still ways a company can create a corporate wellness culture by considering the policies of their workplace and prioritizing the value of overall health for their employees.
-Katie K LMHC, MHP, SUDP
Reference:
Ablah E, Lemon SC, Pronk NP, Wojcik JR, Mukhtar Q, Grossmeier J, et al. Opportunities for Employers to Support Physical Activity Through Policy. Prev Chronic Dis 2019;16:190075. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5888/pcd16.190075external
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